CONSPICUOUS TROPICAL PLANTS 



(Contimted.) 



A CHARACTERISTIC plant in Honolulu, especially 

 about the houses of the natives, is the papaya (Carica 

 Papaya). An erect trunk generally but not always unbranch- 

 ed, bearing at the summit a crown of large palmately lobed 

 or divided leaves, 15 to 20 inches in diameter on petioles two 

 feet long. In the axil of each in the female plant is a bud, 

 blossom or fruit. There will thus be always fruit in all stages 

 of growth, the lowest quite ripe and yellow, the rest green. 

 The fruit is melon like in size and structure, obovoid and 

 four or five inches in diameter, but the seeds are surrounded 

 with a fleshv covering. A plant will ripen several of these 

 fruits each week for several years. The male tree produces 

 great spreading panicles of waxy white blossoms having a 

 delicious spicy fragrance. 



Another tree which during the summer months will at- 

 tract attention by a tempting display of fruit is the avocado 

 (Spanish for advocate or lawyer), more commonly known 

 as the alligator pear (Pcrsea gratissima). The tree is not 

 usually very large nor is its foliage particularly attractive 

 — rather coarse, somewhat rough obovate leaves six or eight 

 inches long. The fruit is commonly of an elongated pear 

 sharp, sometimes club-shaped, occasionally curved like a 

 crook-necked squash, but also sometimes quite spherical; 

 smooth-skinned until quite mature, green, then in some 

 varieties changing suddenly to a dark purple like that of the 

 egg-plant fruit, in others becoming merely somewhat yellow- 

 ish. The weight might range from 8 to 25 or 50 ounces ac- 



